Begotten Son or Eternal Son?

[First and the Last]

The term Son means the manifestation of the one God in flesh. They maintain that Son can refer to the human nature of Christ alone (as in “the Son died”) or to the union of deity and humanity (as in “the Son shall return to earth in glory”). However, they insist that the term can never be used apart from God’s incarnation; it can never refer to deity alone. They reject the non biblical term “God the Son,” the doctrine of the eternal Son, and the doctrine of the eternal begetting. The phrase “only begotten Son” does not refer to an inexplicable, spiritual generation of the Son from the Father, but to the miraculous conception of Jesus in the virgin’s womb by the Holy Spirit.